Tag Archives: business use

Is Twitter a viable marketing tool? Some argue in favor of it, and some argue against it. I think it boils down to whether an interesting conversation can occur as a result of this. Are there interesting anecdotes that can be utilized to explain the brand story? Are businesses simply using social media for the sake of it? Upon further examination, the pluses and minuses of this approach will be discussed.

Some of the advantages of Twitter would be the design of the platform. It is simple, scalable, and easy to develop APIs for Twitter. These APIs are modular and can exist cross-platform. This is also a “cloud” application, where storage of the information is not placed in the users’ computer, but on Twitter’s servers. Mostly, the advantage is that people are able to organize around topics, events, companies and causes offline and online with real-time conversations surrounding these. It is human nature to be curious to know what others are doing and thinking. Twitter is also a viral platform for everyone’s content, and it provides context to people’s conversations.

On the other hand, some challenges for Twitter can include finding content that would be of interest to potential customers. For example, if one’s client sold table salt, what content can be tweeted? The target demographic, busy moms, probably do not have the time or the interest to follow a table salt company’s tweets. It takes much time and energy for twitter campaigns, and in the end is it really worth it? What meaningful conversations can come from 140 or less characters messages? With so many people tweeting, isn’t burdensome to read all of those tweets?

I think despite some of the challenges, twitter can be useful if the brand has a compelling story to tell. Reaping rewards of Twitter for more mundane products/services (e.g. table salt or housecleaning) becomes a greater challenge for marketers. If there is an exciting narrative that surrounds the brand, Twitter becomes an easier tool to utilize.

Using Twitter search , Tinker and other search tools are very important to ascertain what people are saying about one’s brand; one’s industry; competitor products/services; brand’s product/services and the topics of conversations of one’s target market. These could be complaints, compliments, uses of the product or service. Also joining in the conversation between one’s company and the customer is very important. A success story from this was when a customer was complaining about their Comcast Internet service. This customer tweeted their complaint, and instantly, a Comcast customer care representative responded. This built up relational capital between Comcast, that particular customer, current customers and any potential customers. This example of quick customer service became viral across the internet.

How does a business listen to its customers? Is it through the customer service department? Call center operations? This is an interesting article about how businesses can incorporate Twitter as a web 2.0 tool. I had discussed in an earlier post about the benefits of Twitter to enhance friendships, but this post will be about using Twitter to enhance business to customer relationships.

Chris Brogan has listed fifty uses of using Twitter for businesses. It is quite the insightful read. Mostly, it is used for connecting business to its customers through its interests, its insights, customer service and customer opinions.